From 1960 to 1973, the United States and the communist powers waged a hidden war in Laos, which led ultimately to the catastrophe of the Vietnam War. Warner's groundbreaking book offers the first full account of this secret war, based on his access to previously closed files and to interviews with intelligence players, military officers and government officials who have not spoken out before.

An insider's look at the internal turmoil at one of the world's premier high-tech companies This is the inside story of Hewlett-Packard Company's struggle to regain its former glory, and of the high-stakes battle between CEO Carly Fiorina and family scion Walter Hewlett over how best to achieve that goal. For decades, HP was admired not only for its innovative products and soaring stock price, but for its egalitarian corporate culture and father-knows-best integrity. Backfire explains how the company fell on hard times, recounts the historic decision that made Fiorina the world's top-ranking female executive, and brings to life the backlash that resulted when she tried to impose her charismatic salesmanship on the aging icon. Top BusinessWeek journalist Peter Burrows gives the dramatic blow-by-blow of Hewlett's effort to kill Fiorina's most controversial move of all, her $19 billion purchase of rival Compaq Computer. Fiorina won by a whisker, after the most expensive proxy fight in history and a dramatic lawsuit that accused the company of illegally fixing the vote. This gripping, ongoing story includes fascinating personalities and dramatic boardroom and courtroom drama. Peter Burrows (Alameda, CA) has been a technology reporter for BusinessWeek for nine years and has covered the HP saga from the start. The department editor for BusinessWeek's computer coverage, he has been the principal chronicler of Fiorina's tenure at HP, and has written three cover stories on the subject. He has also written numerous other cover stories, including looks at Steve Jobs's Apple Computer and Sun Microsystems' Scott McNealy.

Savich are Sherlock take on an assassin in this novel in Catherine Coulter's FBI Thriller series. For what you did you deserve this. The mysterious note delivered to FBI agent Dillon Savich has him and his partner, Lacey Sherlock, on edge, just as they’re starting an investigation into the shooting of their longtime friend Ramsey Hunt. The San Francisco judge was shot in the back during a high-profile murder trial—and now Sherlock's and Savich’s search for the truth will take a shocking turn that no one could have seen coming…

Discusses what led us into Vietnam, how it has changed our culture today and how it may change our culture in the future.

After twenty-six years in the fire service, author Kennedy Seagrave came to realize that many of the tactics used in firefighting could be helpful in fighting metaphorical fires in everyday life as well. Now she seeks to share the wisdom she gained over the years, while telling her story along the way. Backfire provides a series of practical strategies and problem-solving approaches that can be applied to anyones life, in a wide variety of circumstances. For example, small decisions made correctly can make a tremendous difference in life. Identifying the significance of choices is also essential. Embracing a size-up outlook in life can help you to disregard the often overpowering distractions and evaluate the situation before you make a decisionwhether its entering a burning building to save a life or deciding which college to attend. From the initial sizing up of the situation to the postincident analysis, each step offers methods for dealing with the difficult situations in life based in the techniques used by firefighters every day. Based on the personal narrative and knowledge of a firefighter with more than two decades of experience, this self-help guide presents problem-solving strategies for all people.

David Chalmers, the leading historian of the Ku Klux Klan, brings the story of America's oldest terrorist society up to date. Chalmers skillfully shows how Klan violence actually aided the civil rights movement of the 1960s and revolutionized the role of the national government in the protection of civil rights. He follows the forty-year struggle to punish Klan murderers through the courts of Alabama, Georgia, and the U.S. Supreme Court, and how Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center finally found a way to bring the Klan down.

The author of the bestselling You Are Not So Smart shares more discoveries about self-delusion and irrational thinking, and gives readers a fighting chance at outsmarting their not-so-smart brains David McRaney’s first book, You Are Not So Smart, evolved from his wildly popular blog of the same name. A mix of popular psychology and trivia, McRaney’s insights have struck a chord with thousands, and his blog--and now podcasts and videos--have become an Internet phenomenon. Like You Are Not So Smart, You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality--except we’re not. But that’s okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of fifteen more ways we fool ourselves every day, including: The Misattribution of Arousal (Environmental factors have a greater affect on our emotional arousal than the person right in front of us) Sunk Cost Fallacy (We will engage in something we don’t enjoy just to make the time or money already invested “worth it”) Deindividuation (Despite our best intentions, we practically disappear when subsumed by a mob mentality) McRaney also reveals the true price of happiness, why Benjamin Franklin was such a badass, and how to avoid falling for our own lies. This smart and highly entertaining book will be wowing readers for years to come.

In Back on the Fire, Snyders essays offer his reminiscences on a wide range of topics, from art in Paris to logging on the American West Coast. Throughout the work he gives a powerful voice to nature, whose protests often get lost amid the human d...

Attacks can backfire on attackers_sometimes spectacularly. In March 1991, an observer videotaped several Los Angeles police beating Rodney King with their batons. Shown on television, the beating caused enormous damage to the reputation of the police and led to the chief's resignation. This incident and others, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the 1965 surveillance of Ralph Nader, prove that all sorts of attacks can backfire, from torture and massacres to job dismissals and reprisals against whistle-blowers. Through numerous detailed case studies, Justice Ignited presents the first comprehensive treatment of the dynamics of backfire, as it reveals the most promising tactics for causing the backfire of unfair attacks. Understanding backfire_both promoting and inhibiting it_is vitally important for activists and everyone else who wants to be effective in the face of injustice.